Almost 30 years have passed since Lara Croft took her first snowy steps in the mountains of Peru. In approximately 30 days, PlayStation players will be able to re-experience Lara’s first three adventures around the world, with a new appearance in Tomb Raider I-III Remastered for PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5.
How do we get here? That story takes us to Austin, TX in 1998.
Aspyr and Lara go back a long time
A burgeoning video game company, Aspyr, releases Tomb Raider II on Macintosh computers. Aspyr continued the Tomb Raider franchise until 2003, releasing Tomb Raider, Tomb Raider III, Tomb Raider: The Last Revelation, Tomb Raider: Chronicles, and Tomb Raider: The Angel of Darkness.
We always wanted to revisit these titles, but we always debated the right approach. For years, we worked to achieve the right balance between preservation and modernization. And once we felt like we’d nailed it, we reached out to our friends at Crystal Dynamics.
Insight into crystal dynamics
As Crystal Dynamics continues to expand the Tomb Raider franchise, it seemed like the perfect time to reintroduce audiences to the games that started it all. We wanted to honor the foundation of the franchise and make the original games accessible to modern audiences in all their glory.
What would be the balance between preservation and modernization? We call it Tomb Raider I-III Remastered starring Lara Croft.
Defined remastering
Within pre-production, we divided the conversation into three groups: engineering, gameplay, and art. With these categories in mind, we conduct our conversations in the same order.
Engineering Goal: Pixel-Perfect Preservation Performance
At the beginning, we knew we would use the original source code and engine. Magic cannot simply be reconstructed. A key feature for any update we made was allowing users to return to the original look of Tomb Raider I, II and III.
It’s a love letter to all our memories of these games, but it’s also really fascinating to see how hard the hardware pushed in the ’90s to make Tomb Raider work. Preserving that experience will continue to inspire the engineers of today and tomorrow to push games to be more immersive and memorable.
Goal of the game: Surprise and delight long-time hardcore fans.
We felt strongly that the gameplay of Tomb Raider I, II and III is timeless, and with our use of existing source code, we had every jump, secret, enemy and puzzle exactly as the original development team designed and intended. .
Then the conversation evolved into: how do we surprise and delight these fans? And that’s where we start thinking about additions instead of revisions.
Classic and modern control options
For our modern controller setup, we took inspiration from the Legend, Anniversary, and Underworld era of Tomb Raider. These changes are mainly felt in the way Lara moves: the right stick has full control of the camera and Lara moves directionally depending on the camera position.
Like our approach to graphical presentation, the original tank-style controls are still available to players via a toggle menu.
Boss health bars
One of Tomb Raider’s strong points was the minimal user interface. However, this can be frustrating for tougher bosses with a large amount of health. Added a health bar to let you know if you should switch to the grenade launcher or continue absorbing damage from the pistol.
3D Element Sprite Replacements
While Tomb Raider’s menus used 3D models for the health kit and ammo, the game’s assets were flat 2D sprites. This was a legacy commitment that we have adjusted to provide a little more umph to item collections.
More than 200 trophies
This is a big time for the Tomb Raider community, so we’re making sure to include as much content as possible. We’re pleased to say that there are over 200 trophies to earn, including (my personal favorite) locking the butler in the freezer. Sorry, Winston! Check out a sneak peek below of some you can expect to discover!
Photo mode
Exploring environments in Tomb Raider is magical. We want you to be able to share these iconic environments and moments, so we’ve added a robust photo mode to pose Lara, freeze gameplay, switch between classic and modern graphics, and showcase these environments. We are very excited to see what the community creates with these mods.
And some more surprises
A big part of what we love about Tomb Raider is discovery and we don’t want to spoil it.
Artistic goal: images like in your memory
Once we finalized the engineering and gameplay intent, it was time to move on to our biggest challenge and changes for the project: the art.
Our philosophy here was pretty simple; We want games to look the way they looked in your mind. We knew we were on the right track in our first playtests because some testers didn’t even know they were playing with modern art enabled.
We’ve worked hand-in-hand with Crystal Dynamics on the following modern art updates:
Baked and real-time lighting effects. – These changes add to the immersion and mood of the environment.
Toggle graphics – At any time during the game, even in Photo mode, you can switch between the original and modern graphics.
New models, environments and enemies. – As shown in our initial reveal, we’ve added new models for a consistent, modern look and feel. We’re excited to show what these PS1 environments would look like with modern technologies and tools.
New model for Lara Croft – Their original outfits are impressive. Her silhouette: iconic. Do I need to say more?
Additional updates – We love the classic look of animations, textures and VFX. We’ve made adjustments to the modern scheme to make it appear consistent with the updated models for a polished final look.
We send our admiration and thanks to the Tomb Raider community for inspiring us to work on this carefully restored edition of Tomb Raider I-III. See you on February 14.
Pre-orders are now available on the PlayStation Store.